Worried about HISD? Blame Austin. [Opinion]

An American flag flies with the Texas state flag outside the Texas State Capitol building in Austin.

Photo: David Paul Morris / Bloomberg

Recriminations and castigations are abound since last week, when the Houston Independent School District’s board of trustees deliberated a dunderheaded plan to temporary abandon underperforming schools — ones in underserved, African-American and Hispanic neighborhoods — and give them to charter groups in order to stave off state receivership. Parents were rightfully livid. Police dragged some out of the room.

Bellaire gets rebuilt; Kashmere gets privatized.

Last week, after input from the community, namely Mayor Sylvester Turner, HISD relented and said it will not offer any plans.

A showdown now looms with the state. I welcome it. Come and take it.

HISD’s actions were inexcusable, and its proposal was foolish, but the greatest heap of blame for this crisis should be leveled at state officials, namely Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and the Texas Supreme Court.

The issue comes back to the perennial Texas topic of school finance, and the equally perennial failure to do any sort of reform of consequence on the matter. The state constitution mandates that our schools be not only “free” and “public,” but “efficient.” And so my entire lifetime, the courts have grappled with what, exactly, being efficient requires. The old system, where poor districts kept their crumbs and the rich their cash, was declared unconstitutional, along with three substitutes the Legislature suggested. On the fourth try, the incumbent system originated.

It is nicknamed Robin Hood, because the state is supposed to redistribute the excess money from the rich to the poor. But the sheriff of Nottingham might as well be the arbiter of wealth, because Houston — among other big cities — are considered rich because of valuable property without respect to poverty and other challenges among the actual student body. So Houstonians must send millions to the state, when in reality we need to keep it all, and probably a little more, to efficiently run our schools.

Many other districts have the same problem. So a few years ago they sued and tried to enforce the constitution. A district judge in Austin agreed, but the Texas Supreme Court reversed unanimously. A 2016 opinion penned by Justice Don Willett — who is now a judge on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals— found the way Texas funds its schools to minimally pass constitutional muster. More damning, Justice Eva Guzman wrote a concurrence wherein she cautioned that just because the system is acceptable today does not mean the same will necessarily be true tomorrow.

Professor Lynn Baker, who specializes in state and local government law at the University of Texas School of Law, told me this was a roundabout way of the court declaring the controversy over efficient schools to be not justiciable, which is to say a political question only answerable by the Legislature.

So in the 2017 legislative session, some brave lawmakers attempted to make the system better. House Speaker Joe Straus and state Rep. Dan Huberty, chair of the House Education Committee, fastened some minor progress. It was dead on arrival in Patrick’s Senate. Patrick, instead, advocates the idea that we would be better off destroying the public system in favor of vouchers for private schools. And in a session where Straus and Patrick bickered about much else, Huberty’s bill was a collateral casualty.

Then Abbott called a special session on topics of his choosing, as he has the unfettered discretion to do as governor. He picked 20 issues. One was the now-infamous Bathroom Bill. Another was state pre-emption of local tree regulations. Still, one was the establishment of a commission to review the school finance system; not actual fixes, but a commission. The house is in flames, and Abbott wanted a commission to discuss calling the fire department. It appears school toilets were more important than school finance.

And now, we are here. A broken, barely-constitutional system that clips HISD’s wings is threatening our future and cheating schoolchildren, who are shamefully deprived of the efficient education to which they are entitled. Bad options are galore because of a feckless governor, a malicious lieutenant governor and an abdicating judiciary.

It is true that the constitution also prohibits a statewide property tax and makes a state income tax functionally impossible, drastically limiting funding options. But those parts of the state constitution do not matter more than the part about what the kids deserve. Our politicians and judges take oaths to that constitution, and for all their constituents.

They need to fix this problem. Now. And if they don’t, they need to be voted out of office.